Remembering JackThose of us who grew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we who have original Beatles' albums, read every word of the music press. Each week I would buy Music Echo, then, later, Disc.In 1970, Discbegan a cartoon series drawn by one J Edward Oliver, about the tales of the eponymous hero E C Ryder. I remember the week when Jack's strip first appeared in Disc. It was funny, but we didn't think it would last.The series began as a mildly amusing tale with a few witty jokes, but, as time went on, it grew in size, eventually to a full page, JEO drew other items for the papers and wrote words, new characters appeared that became the nation's favourite, there was a fan club and a Friends of J Edward Oliver Society.It was essential reading. Then it was the first thing you would look at. Jack's contributions was half a page, then one page, then more, words as well as pictures, colour covers, the lot.Eventually, Disc (and Music Echo) was taken over by Record Mirror. Times had changed, as had the music. The Bay City Rollers ruled the airwaves. But JEO's strip continued. It was the best thing in the paper, even if it was back to only half a page and Jack was having a battle with the Editors. Maybe his heart wasn't in it by the end?The strip was axed in 1977. All my collection of papers went into the trash, but not before the strips and other material had been rescued and stuck into several Boot's the Chemist scrap books.There were some gaps in my collection - I remember trudging round London trying to find a copy some weeks to be met with "they're on strike, no deliveries" - but only a few. If I had all those papers now, they would be worth a fortune.I took the scrap books with me everywhere. All these years later and I still have them and, yes, I still look at them. And I know other people look at the ones they have too.But I had often wondered, who was JEO, what was he doing, perhaps he was writing his strip somewhere else and I was missing it? Why was he so obsessed with Madeline Smith?"Maybe ‘J Edward Oliver’ was just a pseudonym for someone else and had never really existed. Had anyone ever seen him? If he did exist, what was he doing now? Was he really Lon Goddard? Married to Madeline Smith? Rich and famous?In 2000, I wanted to make a website that was unique. There was no J Edward Oliver site I could see and I had a mass of material. Having made a very small site that summer, I found postal address (actually, it was printed in the strip at one point, but I had assumed it was fake - wouldn’t do that these days), Dartford. Jack was in the Yellow Pages too, as a cartoonist. I wrote.Nothing... And then one day, a recycled brown envelope with a drawing that said "Fresco lives". The letters came, there was correspondence, then e-mails and more material. Some of it was serious, some full of memories, some "don't publish this...". On other pages, I have published some of this material for the first time.Jack contributed a lot to this site, apart from the obvious things. He has written many comments and bits of history about his work, and we have left these just as they were when first published. This site really concentrates on the Disc/Record Mirror material and there are other sites about his other comic work.We only disagreed a couple of times. One was when he wanted to colour Fresco. I hate 'colorized' films, Jack quite liked them. To me, Fresco lives in a black and white world, and he always will.